Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Classical music beginners who want a quick overview of Haydn's life and works
- Students who need accessible English reading to supplement a music history course
- General enthusiasts interested in eighteenth-century court musical life
- English learners who want to practise reading with an original English text
Not a good fit for
- Specialist researchers who need the latest scholarly research and a detailed works catalogue
- Readers looking for in-depth score analysis or instruction in compositional technique
- Readers who prefer reading in Chinese and do not want to check old-fashioned English expressions
Reading tips
- Read the whole book first to grasp the main line of the life, then pick representative works from each period and read while listening.
- Note down old-style renderings and names as you go, and look up the modern standard forms.
- Treat it as an introduction, then read a contemporary music history for comparison of views.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Is this a complete and detailed scholarly biography?
What period limitations should I keep in mind while reading?
How difficult is the original English for general readers?
Comments
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About the author
John F. Runciman (1866–1916) was a British music critic and biographer active in British music writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; five of his works are held in this collection. He is known chiefly for short biographies of composers and for music criticism. His representative works include Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas and Old Scores and New Readings: Discussions on Music & Certain Musicians, along with short biographical books on Haydn, Purcell, and Wagner. His prose is sharp and his judgments distinctive; within limited space he sketches a composer's character and creative traits, often expressing personal views. He is regarded as one of the representative figures in early twentieth-century British music writing. Public information on his early education, professional career, and detailed life is limited; what can be confirmed is mainly the contribution of his criticism and biographical works to the popularization and criticism of music.
